The End of My Addiction

none of the signs of alcohol use which Mr. Ameisen had accustomed me to expect with him.
    …One easily sees in him the person that could only be guessed at during his period of “full alcoholization.” He displays none of the conformist dulling behavior that one sometimes encounters in alcoholics who are only “repentant.” Also, no triumphalism whatsoever, since
    Mr. Ameisen states that he would risk falling back into psychological dependence toward alcohol if he were to discontinue baclofen.
    It is not for me to infer what in this change is due to baclofen or to any other associated factor…But it is the facts—the change, the rehabilitation—that strike me clearly; I am happy to furnish to Mr.
    Ameisen testimony as a clinician and a therapist, or at the very least, as a practitioner who had made all efforts to fulfil this goal.
    Doctor Jean-Paul Descombey
Paris, 4 November 2004
    In less than six weeks, short order for a scientific paper, my self-case report was reviewed, revised, and accepted for publication. It was slated to appear first in electronic form on December 13, 2004, and subsequently in the normal print edition of Alcohol and Alcoholism (see the appendix for the full text of the article).
    I briefly had second thoughts about becoming the first physician to admit to an addiction in a published paper. That no physician had apparently done so before, even under a pseudonym, much less his or her real name, indicated how much there was to lose. It was an agonizing decision. But I remembered Philippe Coumel’s words to me when I returned to Paris from New York: “As a physician, how can you be embarrassed about having a disease?” It was long since time for addiction to be seen in proper moral terms as a disease like any other, and I could only hope that publishing the paper under my real name would contribute to that understanding. Breaking this taboo was worth it if it advanced the treatment of alcoholism.

8. The End of Addiction?
    ON DECEMBER 12, 2004, the day before my self-case report’s electronic publication by Alcohol and Alcoholism , I realized that I had not yet told my own alcoholism specialist, Dr. S., about my recovery or the case report. Over the previous year I had seen her infrequently, because I had not been making any progress with conventional alcoholism therapy. But she had always treated me with great kindness, and she deserved to hear about my experiences directly from me. I accordingly e-mailed her a copy of the self-case report with a brief cover note, and we arranged to meet in late January.
    A week later, I heard from Giovanni Addolorato, whose articles on the effect of low-dose baclofen helped embolden me to try higher doses on myself. He wrote requesting a reprint of my report, which I immediately sent. Ten days after that, I saw online an abstract of a new paper by Addolorato on the use of baclofen in preventing alcohol withdrawal syndrome. He sent me a reprint at my request and wrote:
    Many compliments for your paper published in Alcohol and Alcoholism; a query: do you still continue the baclofen therapy (if yes, at the dose of)? Are you still abstinent?
    My best wishes
Giovanni
    From this point on, Giovanni and I were on a first-name basis, as I soon was with his colleagues Giancarlo Colombo, Roberta Agabio, and Fabio Caputo. Giovanni and Giancarlo said that when I came to Italy they would hold a seminar on my self-case report and treatment model.
    I was glowing with hope these days. Here I was, the author of the first peer-reviewed report of complete suppression of alcoholism symptoms—a report published in one of the world’s leading medical journals on alcoholism. Concerned that I was going to be flooded with mail from interested physicians and researchers, I had rented a post office box and given that as my contact address in the self-case report, along with my e-mail address and telephone number. “It’s only a matter of time,” I thought, “before full-scale randomized trials of baclofen’s effectiveness will be launched.”
    I felt as if I’d scaled Mount Everest. I’d barely made it to the base camp.
     
    Late January came, and I arrived for my appointment with Dr. S. In the month or so since I’d sent her my article, she had not yet had an opportunity to read it, she told me, but she was delighted by the change in my condition, and she said that my self-case report would be the topic of the hospital alcohology department’s staff meeting the